RKK
LightNews LightNews
banner
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
RKK
@ronakkapadia.bsky.social
1.5K followers 800 following 310 posts
Author: INSURGENT AESTHETICS | Writing: BREATHING IN THE BROWN QUEER COMMONS | Curator: https://www.survivingthelongwars.online/ | art/abolition/war/security/empire/futurism/healing/disability/justice | Pisces ♓️🐟. Personal account.
Posts Replies Media Videos
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
6 years ago, Insurgent Aesthetics came into the world 💙🛩️📚 I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has lifted this work. The communities formed around these ideas mean the world to me, even as I feel undone by the book’s continued relevance to the criminal disorder of things.

@dukepress.bsky.social
Full cover spread of #InsurgentAesthetics (Duke University Press, 2019)
October 25, 2025 at 11:04 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
FRIENDS & COLLEAGUES, plz share this promo widely! Purchasing link in the comments. Sharing the promo flyer for SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: CREATIVE REBELLION AT THE ENDS OF EMPIRE (Bridge BOOKS), complete with praise from William Ayers, Alex Lubin, Keith Feldman, Jan Barry, Rebecca Zorach, and more!
front side of promo flyer with praise for the new book SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: CREATIVE REBELLION AT THE ENDS OF EMPIRE (BRIDGE BOOKS 2024). Purchase your copy here: https://www.survivingthelongwars.online/book back side of promo flyer with praise for the new book SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: CREATIVE REBELLION AT THE ENDS OF EMPIRE (BRIDGE BOOKS 2024). Purchase your copy here: https://www.survivingthelongwars.online/book
May 15, 2025 at 7:47 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
A reminder from the before-times. #alternatemaps #insurgentaesthetics

Image ID: Highlighted text from pps 11-12 of Ronak Kapadia's Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke Univ Press 2019)
Highlighted text from pps 11-12 of Ronak Kapadia's Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke Univ Press 2019)
March 26, 2025 at 6:15 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Kieran wins the Oscar
March 3, 2025 at 1:53 AM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
🇸🇩 🇵🇸 ✊🏾
February 10, 2025 at 2:38 AM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
If I send this to you, it’s because I’m about to be monumentally petty in public. 😝

Image ID: A towering figure in the cutie pie and hater communities.
A towering figure in the cutie pie and hater communities.
February 10, 2025 at 2:07 AM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
A gentle reminder for these vertiginous times, if I may, from #InsurgentAesthetics. On mining the felicitous cracks:
“Despite its projected sense of dominance, breadth, and precision, the contemporary US military-surveillance state is not static nor omnipotent. If we follow the lead of Mahwish Chishty and the other visionary artists and cultural practitioners considered in this book, we might discover that the US state’s capricious imperial powers are in fact fleeting, fragile, and always failing. Felicitous cracks have appeared in the surface of the forever war’s architecture that can be exploited by forms of fu-gitivity, refusal, and rebellion “that were impossible yesterday and might be impossible tomorrow.” 4 New assemblages of state security and flexible war-making, including drone warfare, have engendered racialized worlds of untold anguish for those rendered suspect within its imperial world order. But this historical fact also augurs new openings for the forever war’s insurgent undoing.”
February 4, 2025 at 10:23 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Mural in wynwood walls, MIA
December 28, 2024 at 3:46 AM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
@UICGWS: teaching the GWS undergrad capstone course next semester (GWS 390: Feminism & Social Change). I am planning on organizing this as a full semester on anti-fascist feminisms for the here and now. Seats are still available; tell your friends!
Feminism and Social Change Flyer for Spring 2025, GWS 390, Taught by Dr. Ronak Kapadia, GWS Program, University of Illinois Chicago
December 12, 2024 at 10:50 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Every queer studies professor becomes who they are, in part, because of the brilliant care and mentorship of their favorite high school English teacher. I’m glad I still have my fave 25 years later. Look who came to my book launch today! 💓 📕 #survivingthelongwars
The author with his fave HS English teacher @chicagoculturalcenter
December 9, 2024 at 1:34 AM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Oops, here’s Jan Barry’s endorsement!
Jan Barry blurb 1 Jan Barry 2
December 6, 2024 at 9:53 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
The reviews for SURVIVING THE LONG WARS are streaming in. Listen to Jan Barry and Lori Waxman and get your copy today: www.bridge-chicago.org/bridge-store...
Blurb from Alex Lubin 1 Blurb from Alex Lubin 2 Blurb from Alex Lubin 3 Blurb from Lori Waxman
December 6, 2024 at 9:48 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
The reviews for SURVIVING THE LONG WARS are streaming in. Listen to @underthetreepod.bsky.social and @rabbitrez.bsky.social and buy your copy today: www.bridge-chicago.org/bridge-store...
Blurb from Bill Ayers Bill Ayers blurb part 2 Blurb from Rebecca Zorach Blurb from Rebecca Zorach part 2
December 6, 2024 at 9:46 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
You can read my afterword to our new book _Surviving the Long Wars_ here: www.academia.edu/125786576/Af...

#survivingthelongwars #creativerebellion #aaronbushnell #USempire #Palestinesolidarity #nativestudies #MiddleEasternstudies #criticalethnicstudies
Cover spread of "Afterword: Meditations on Survival and Rebellion" by Ronak K. Kapadia, from SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: CREATIVE REBELLION AT THE ENDS OF EMPIRE (BRIDGE BOOKS 2024)
December 6, 2024 at 7:46 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
The reviews for the #SurvivingtheLongWars book are streaming in. Up next, read this from American Studies Association President-Elect Alex Lubin. Thank you, prez! @a-lubin.bsky.social

Join us on Sunday for our book launch event at Chicago Cultural Center: www.eventbrite.com/e/surviving-...
“Surviving the Long Wars brings together critics and curators, artists and academics, to highlight insurgent aesthetic practices that produce counter-knowledge to the “long wars” and that offer a fugitive plan for (possibly) finding our way out. Combining stunning aesthetic and poetic practices with smart critical framing, Surviving the Long Wars is a unique and vital contribution that provides a strategy to survive and navigate within and beyond permanent war. The project’s curatorial process, bringing together visual art, poetry, and cultural critique, exemplifies the sort of coalitional strategy of survival/resistance required of our militarized existence. Indeed, among the book’s most significant accomplishments is its enactment of its central thesis—that the first task of confronting the long wars is to survive them and then to restructure the world with critical and creative aesthetic knowledge practices. Surviving the Long Wars offers a strategy for linking movements, ideas, and art across a planet fractured by militarized violence and imperial declension.” —Alex Lubin, author of Never-Ending War on Terror
December 5, 2024 at 10:36 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
The reviews for #survivingthelongwars are streaming in, and up first, is our dear comrade @underthetreepod.bsky.social Bill Ayers. Join us on Sunday for our book launch event at the Chicago Cultural Center: www.eventbrite.com/e/surviving-...
"Freedom for the conqueror is always terror and torture for the conquered, and therein lies the foundational American contradiction. The authors and artists assembled under the banner of Surviving the Long Wars look unblinkingly into that contradiction and refuse to look away. Here are the truth-tellers and popular educators, the movement-makers and organizers shining a powerful light into the darkness and illuminating a harsh reality: fighting for freedom from Britain, the colonists also fought for the freedom to continue the Atlantic slave trade, their right to own other human beings, and the freedom to annihilate the Indigenous peoples. Our vaunted American freedoms rest atop a bloody pyramid of human suffering, a monumental structure deliberately obscured by a manufactured set of fairy tales designed to smooth out the contradictions and hide the terrible truths: America is a “nation of laws,” but the lawlessness of the law itself is its most striking feature; America is a “nation of immigrants,” but the rotten foundations of settler colonialism remain a defining trait; America is a “peace-loving” country, but also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth with the largest military behemoth ever created. Don’t look behind that fraying curtain! cry the myth-making wizards of the United States of Amnesia. But let’s look anyway, and Surviving the Long Wars is a compelling guide—here is an antidote to despair and an invitation to act. Arm-in-arm, heart-to-heart, this necessary book is a light in dark times." —Bill Ayers, author of When Freedom Is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer
December 5, 2024 at 6:13 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Biden came into office saying he would "end" the pandemic only to go on to ignore it/dismantle the limited pub health infrastructure built under Trump to address it even tho his 3rd infx ended his 50-year political career. Now he's ignoring the 1st stages of a possibly deadlier pandemic with H5n1.
A graph showing the legacy of the C19 pandemic during the Biden era in the US, comparing actual wastewater surveillance data to the (dismantled) case counts over time.
December 2, 2024 at 4:05 AM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Every single term in this book title is a vital keyword for navigating our dystopian political here and now. We need this 📕, now more than ever!

Surviving
Long Wars
Creative Rebellion
Ends of Empire

Order here: survivingthelongwars.online/book
Front cover design of SURVIVING THE LONG WARS Side stack of books for SURVIVING THE LONG WARS
November 25, 2024 at 8:25 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
My two book babies, exactly 5 years apart. 🥰 📕 🐣
Two colorful books laying side by side. On the left is Insurgent Aesthetics (Duke 2019) and on the right is Surviving the Long Wars (out now from Bridge Books).
November 23, 2024 at 10:37 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Spread of Ronak Kapadia’s afterword: Meditations on Survival and Rebellion From the afterword From the afterword From the afterword
November 23, 2024 at 10:34 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Color spread featuring works by Michael Rakowitz Color spread with works by Chris Pappan Color spread of works by Dorothy Burge Color spread of works by Melissa Dowd and Miridith Campbell
November 23, 2024 at 10:34 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
It’s here!!! #survivingthelongwars you can order your copy here: www.survivingthelongwars.online/book
Cover of Surviving the Long Wars Book dedication Color spread of works by Rajkamal Kahlon Color spreads by Bassim Al Shaker
November 23, 2024 at 10:34 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Do you need a copy of #InsurgentAesthetics? This book makes a great holiday gift in these dreary times & is 40% off now during @dukepress.bsky.social's Fall sale. That means this 350+ page book, w/ its gorgeous 26 color plates & 100 images, is only $23 w/fees! www.dukeupress.edu/insurgent-ae...
Full cover spread of Insurgent Aesthetics by Ronak K. Kapadia (Duke University Press 2019)
November 21, 2024 at 10:27 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
Please SAVE THE DATE!
Surviving the Long Wars Book Release & Exhibition Closing
3:00-4:30PM Dec 8, 2024
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St., Chicago, IL 60602
*Masks required & avail on-site*
Eventbrite: bit.ly/4erxWPf
www.facebook.com/events/17369...
www.survivingthelongwars.online/book
Promo for SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: CREATIVE REBELLIONS AT THE ENDS OF EMPIRE, edited by Aaron Hughes, Ronak K. Kapadia, Therese Quinn, Meranda Roberts, and Amber Zora. Published by Bridge Books bridge-books.org Book release save the date for Sunday, December 8, 2024, 3-430 pm, Chicago Cultural Center (Grand Army of the Republic Hall and Rotunda) survivingthelongwars.online/book Image of colorful stack of books for SURVIVING THE LONG WARS Insert spread from the book. Title says: "section one: Residues and Rebellions", greyscale background
November 15, 2024 at 9:48 PM
ronakkapadia.bsky.social
My new article, "The Downward Redistribution of Breath" has finally been published in ADVA 8.3(Jan 2024). If you don't have library access, send me a DM or comment below w/ your email, & I can send you the article (first 8 folks who request it). brill.com/view/journal...
Title page and abstract for Ronak K Kapadia’s article “The Downward Redistribution of Breath” in ADVA 8.3
January 20, 2024 at 6:23 PM